Insatiable

by Meg Cabot

  That’s when Mary Lou’s gaze fell to the sword in Alaric’s hand. “Well,” she said, her smile fading. “What was going on here with you two boys while I was gone?”

  “Nothing,” Emil said. “Nothing was going on. Mr. Wulf was just leaving. Weren’t you, Mr. Wulf?”

  Alaric just stood there, holding Meena Harper’s squirming dog. For the first time in his career, he wasn’t certain what to do.

  He was sworn to kill all demons, no matter what their form.

  And sometimes those forms could be very deceiving indeed. That’s what the dark side did: worked to play tricks on the human mind, to rouse compassion and sympathy to keep a man from doing what he’d been trained to do-plow a stake through the heart of whatever evil creature was before him.

  But for once, Alaric wasn’t certain what stood before him truly was evil.

  Maybe all that chattering Meena Harper had been doing, about redemption and rehabilitation and how Lucien Antonescu wasn’t like the other vampires, was getting to him.

  But he actually believed these two vampires were just a couple of pathetic losers-with very good taste in home furnishings and art-who deserved to have to spend all of eternity with each other.

  Could he actually feel sorry for them?

  And the truth was…they had saved Jack Bauer from being blown up in the microwave by the Dracul.

  And Meena Harper liked them.

  Good God. What was happening to him?

  “If you tell anyone about this,” he said, pointing Señor Sticky at their necks, causing them both to stagger back a few steps, “I’ll find you, wherever you are, and force one of you to choke on the dust of the other.”

  Mary Lou looked queasy. “Good heavens,” she said. “We won’t tell.”

  Alaric turned and ran from the apartment. He didn’t bother with the elevator. He took the stairs, two at a time, down all eleven flights, giving Jack Bauer quite a jogging in his arms. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom that he paused to think about what he’d just done:

  Let two vampires go free.

  He was going to regret this. It was going to come back to haunt him.

  On the other hand…

  He could always hunt them down and kill them later. How hard would it be, considering the woman’s obvious taste for designer clothes?

  He sheathed his sword and put Jack Bauer down on his four paws. Then he hit the exit door and walked out into the lobby.

  His cell phone buzzed. He reached down to answer it.

  “Alaric Wulf,” he said.

  “Alaric?” Jon Harper’s anxious voice was on the other end of the line. “Where are you? Are you still at the building? Because we have a problem. A big problem.”

  Chapter Fifty-four

  10:15 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

  Uptown 6 train

  New York, New York

  The subway. Of course it had to be the subway.

  Well, how else was she supposed to get there? It was Saturday night, and she was downtown. There weren’t any cabs.

  And Meena had to get uptown as quickly as possible.

  What else was she supposed to do, exactly? Sit quietly in a windowless room in the convent, like they wanted her to, and let Sister Gertrude and “the men” go uptown with Stefan Dominic and get themselves killed trying to save Leisha?

  Sitting quietly in a windowless room might have been all right for Yalena, who was traumatized physically and emotionally. But that wasn’t all right for Meena, who was the reason all of these people, including Leisha, were in so much danger in the first place.

  Meena sat on the 6 train, trying not to make eye contact with any of the other people in her car. The last thing she needed right now was to get involved in someone else’s problems.

  She had plenty of her own.

  Scholarly Abraham Holtzman, listening to her and Jon frantically trying to explain what they’d heard on the phone after they’d come running down from the roof to find him, had nodded gravely and said, “Yes. Yes, of course. It all makes sense. St. George’s is under construction, you say?”

  Jon had nodded. “Yeah. It’s closed to the public while it undergoes renovation.”

  “When I was walking by it the night I first met-” Meena had interrupted herself. “Well, when the colony of bats attacked me, I thought one of the spires was falling down. It’s in pretty bad shape.”

  Father Bernard, Sister Gertrude, and Abraham Holtzman had all exchanged uneasy glances when they’d heard this.

  “What?” Meena had cried. “What difference does that make?” She’d already begun to regret telling any of them anything. She should have just run straight from the rectory and for the nearest train station…

  “A church that has gone too long unused-or unrepaired-falls into danger of becoming deconsecrated,” Abraham had explained slowly. “Perfect for demon rites.”

  “Demon rites?” Just the words had caused the hairs on the back of Meena’s neck to prickle. “Like…the coronation of a new prince of darkness?”

  No one had answered her. They’d already begun running around, gathering weapons for what they obviously thought was going to be some kind of apocalyptic showdown up at St. George’s with the Dracul-who had all mysteriously vanished from outside of St. Clare’s. None of them-not Abraham Holtzman, nor Father Bernard, nor Sister Gertrude, nor the friars and other nuns…nor even the novices or her brother, Jon-showed the slightest flicker of fear or even of hesitation. They were perfectly prepared, Meena saw, to fight.

  And perhaps to die.

  But what they didn’t know-and she did-was that they were going to die. All of them. Every last one of them. The truth of what lay in store for them had hit her with perfect, almost stunning clarity in those few moments as she’d stood there in the rectory hallway:

  Dimitri was holding her best friend-her pregnant best friend-captive at St. George’s Cathedral and wasn’t going to let her go unless Meena showed up to make the exchange.

  Her own life for that of her friend.

  Then when that happened, there’d be a second exchange: Meena’s life for Lucien’s.

  After which Dimitri Antonescu, the demon half brother of Lucien Antonescu, son of Dracula, the prince of darkness, would crown himself the new prince in the deconsecrated cathedral…

  …and a reign of vampiric terror and death would spread across Manhattan, if not the world.

  Meanwhile, Meena’s brother; Abraham; Sister Gertrude…all of these good people dashing around her were going to die fighting to try to stop what Meena saw happening in her mind’s eye. She envisioned exactly the same death for them, in fact, that she’d seen for Alaric Wulf when she’d looked into his future while she’d been tying her scarf around his wrist:

  Darkness. Fire. Lots and lots of fire. Then…

  Nothing. Just…nothing.

  It was what Meena had tried to explain to Lucien that first night she’d spent with him. How being dead was never a happy ending.

  Because when Meena looked into the futures of people who were going to die, all she saw was a vast pit of nothingness, stretching out before her like a huge crevasse. She stood with the toes of her shoes poking over the edge of that crevasse, so deep she couldn’t even see the bottom.

  She hoped there was some kind of afterlife beyond the pit of nothingness. But maybe it was better that if there was, she couldn’t see it.

  Because it was the nothingness that drove Meena to warn people to look out, even though they often didn’t listen. It was nothingness she saw in her friends’ futures that night. Their lives were barreling straight toward it.

  Which was why, standing there in the rectory, she took action. She grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper and jotted a quick note; scooped up enough change for train fare from a jar by the door, since Alaric had long ago taken her wallet; and left, making sure the note would be easily discovered.

  She knew they’d be upset. In fact, Alaric Wulf’s explicit orders, when Jon had reached him over the ph
one, had been the exact opposite of what she was doing: to keep Meena as far away from St. George’s Cathedral as possible.

  Oh, and he’d also said that her dog was fine and that Alaric was leaving him in the safekeeping of Pradip, the doorman, for the time being.

  Apparently, Meena going to St. George’s was only going to hasten, not put an end to, the coming demonic apocalypse.

  But none of that changed the fact that Meena knew she was the one who had caused all this.

  And that she had seen what she had seen, and knew what she knew. Which was more than Alaric Wulf, with all his experience, or Abraham Holtzman, with his Palatine Guard Human Resources Handbook, knew.

  She was the one who had looked into the future and seen it filled with fire, darkness, and finally, slow, agonizing death for all of them.

  Then, nothingness.

  No. Not today.

  Because if she knew anything at all, it was that that was only one version of the future.

  The future could change. She could change it. She’d done it before, lots of times. She’d stopped people from hurtling over the side of that precipice more times than she could count.

  She was going to do it again tonight.

  And no one, not Alaric, not Lucien, not even a crazed pack of vampires, was going to stop her.

  The subway train roared into the Seventy-seventh Street station. Meena’s station.

  She got up from her seat…then paused before stepping through the sliding doors when they opened. There was a couple that had been making out on the seat across from hers. They had gotten up at the same time she had. She glanced at them…

  And saw, in her mind’s eye, both of them getting struck on the head and killed by a gigantic piece of flying blue scaffolding.

  It looked suspiciously like the blue scaffolding that surrounded St. George’s.

  The couple had their arms around each other, still canoodling as they started to get off the train. Meena, standing in the open subway car door, held up both her hands like claws, opened her mouth, and hissed at them.

  “Get back!” she shrieked. “Don’t get off at this stop!”

  “Shit!” the boy cried, staggering backward.

  The girl looked torn between fear and embarrassment. She giggled nervously. “Dude,” she said to her boyfriend. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I’m a vampire!” Meena yelled, stepping off the train but staying in the doorway and still making menacing motions with her hands. “A vampire! Stay on the train!”

  “Stand clear of the closing doors,” the voice announced.

  The train doors closed, trapping the couple safely inside. Meena immediately dropped her hands, resumed her normal posture, turned, and began walking away. She saw the boy make an obscene gesture at her as the subway car pulled past her and out of the station.

  She waved at him.

  Meena hurried through the station, which was empty on a Saturday night, inhaling the familiar scent of stale urine, then jogged up the steps to Seventy-seventh Street.

  It wouldn’t be long now. What would she do when she got there? She didn’t know, exactly. She still had the stake that Alaric had given her in her back pocket. Maybe she’d stake someone. Like Dimitri.

  She’d demanded her cell phone back from Jon after he’d called Alaric. She’d texted Lucien about what had happened with Leisha.

  With luck, he would already be at St. George’s when she got there and everything would be taken care of. She’d walk in and find Leisha freed and perfectly fine, and Dimitri and the rest of the Dracul dusted, with stakes in their hearts. Lucien would take her tenderly in his arms, and they’d fly off to Thailand to begin their new lives together as man and wife…after they picked up Jack Bauer from Pradip, of course. Jon could be best man at their wedding.

  Yeah, Meena thought cynically as she approached the church, its spires floodlit against the inky sky. That so wasn’t going to happen.

  The church looked abandoned…dead. The blue scaffolding that surrounded it was undisturbed, covered in razor wire at the top, chained with padlocks.

  No one, human or vampire, was around, that Meena could see.

  Had this all been some kind of sick vampire joke? Had they made her come all the way up there for nothing?

  And if so…where was Leisha? How was Meena ever going to find her?

  Frustrated, Meena stood there at the bottom of the steps in front of the church, exactly where Lucien had tackled her a few nights ago and saved her from what she knew now had been an attack by the Dracul. If only she could go back in time and…

  And what? What would she have done differently?

  Nothing at all. She’d have fallen in love with him all over again right then and there. Who wouldn’t have? He was everything that-

  “Meena!”

  Startled, Meena turned around. A familiar voice was calling her name.

  She turned again, at first failing to see anyone. Then finally she spotted a man sitting on the stoop of a brownstone across the street. She recognized him in the light from the streetlamps.

  “Adam?” she cried. “What are you doing over there?”

  As Meena hurried to cross the street to his side, however, she soon saw the answer to her question.

  Adam, a white bandage around his throat, had been handcuffed to the metal railing alongside the steps to the building.

  “That freak chained me here!” Adam yelled, rattling the cuffs in an effort to free himself. “He told me to stay with Pradip after he patched me up, but I followed him instead. So he threw these cuffs on me so I couldn’t go into the church after him. He said it was too dangerous. What am I supposed to do now, huh, Meena? They have my wife in there! And I’m stuck out here. You have to help me get free, Meena. Do you have a hairpin or something? You can pick locks, right?”

  Meena looked down at Adam. He was a mess. His entire shirtfront was covered in what appeared to be his own blood from the bite wound he’d sustained on his neck.

  But he didn’t seem to be in shock anymore. His pupils looked normal sized.

  And his anger was typically Adam.

  “Who left you here, Adam?” Meena asked. She actually had a pretty good idea. But she wanted to be sure. “Whose handcuffs are those?”

  “That freak vampire-slayer friend of yours,” Adam cried. “That’s who. The one you and Jon sent to allegedly help me. Some help he was! I’ve been sitting out here doing nothing while my wife, Leisha, is probably being eaten alive-”

  “Leisha is fine,” Meena said reassuringly, laying a soothing hand on his shoulder. “I promise you. I would know if something had happened to her.” Meena hoped this was true. “You said Alaric is inside the church already?”

  “Yeah, he’s inside the church. I told you, he left me out here while he went in with that big sword of his! He’s even got a name for it. Señor Stinky or something. Meena, you’ve got to unlock these cuffs. I need to get in there and help find my wife. Who knows what they’re doing to her?”

  “You should be in a hospital,” Meena murmured, absently patting him on the shoulder.

  “Screw the hospital,” Adam said. “I need to find my wife! It’s my fault she’s in there in the first place.”

  “No,” Meena said firmly. “It’s my fault.”

  She walked away from him, starting back across the street, toward the church. If Alaric had gotten inside, she could, too.

  “Hey,” Adam yelled after her, outraged. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me here, too, Meena!”

  “You’ll be fine out there, Adam,” she called over her shoulder. “Believe me. You’re better off there than you would be coming with me.”

  “This is bullshit!” Adam shouted. “Bullshit! You get back here, Meena! You turn around and get back here, right now!”

  But instead of turning around, Meena stalked right up to the scaffolding that surrounded the church. There had to be a way inside, she told herself. If Alaric had found a way, she could too.

&nb
sp; Tentatively, she laid a hand on the cool blue wood.

  No sooner had she done this than it blew apart.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  10:30 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

  St. George’s Cathedral

  180 East Seventy-eighth Street

  New York, New York

  The force of the explosion sent Meena sprawling back against the sidewalk where she’d first lain with Lucien. It also sent razor wire and pieces of plywood flying. Meena flung up her arms to protect her eyes. Around her, car alarms went off.

  Then, just as suddenly, they were silenced.

  When she put her arms down and opened her eyes, it was just in time to catch one particularly huge chunk of blue painted plywood landing exactly where the young couple from the subway would have been…if she hadn’t scared them from getting off the train.

  Instead, the wood landed harmlessly on the sidewalk with a solid clunk.

  “What the hell was that?” she heard Adam ask from the across the street.

  Rising painfully to her scraped hands and knees, Meena found herself looking at the doors to the church, which had now been thrown open. A tall man who looked not unlike Lucien, except that he was a little shorter and a little heavier and wore a light gray suit with a black shirt and tie-which Meena couldn’t imagine Lucien doing-stepped through the cloud of dust left behind by the explosion and peered down at her, a pleased expression on his face.

  “Meena Harper, I presume?” he said. Unlike his brother, there wasn’t a trace of anything European in his accent.

  Meena nodded. “That’s me,” she said, coughing a little from all the dust. “Are you Dimitri?”

  “I am,” he said. He offered her his hand to help her up. Meena, her heart hammering, took it, because what else was she going to do? She had come there for a reason, and that was to free her friend and end this.

  The time had come to do both.

  “Sorry about that,” he said apologetically. “Oh, look at your poor coat. Here, let me help you.” He brushed dust and bits of plywood off the suede of her jacket. “You know, you’re nothing like I expected.”